I wish I applied to a LAC

Juvenis
Fri, 25 Jan 2013 19:35:55 +0000

This isn’t a lesson or preach, but more of my personal vent. I’m a high school senior, done with college apps. No turning back, what’s done is done. So I should just relax and let fate run its course, right? That’s what I thought at first, but I couldn’t shake off a nagging feeling that I probably missed applying to what may be a perfect college experience.

I can’t define what my perfect college is, since I didn’t really visit any schools besides a tour in one of them, but honestly it didn’t give me much information other than the beauty of the campus. My parents and I have neither the time nor money to afford college visits, and to muddy the waters more, I go to a relatively small, religiously-affiliated, all-boys school, so college visits would’ve helped so much more I think.

I didn’t feel like applying to any other schools because, for one thing, I was already applying to 12, so application fees were one of my concerns. Of course, only now do I realize that the fees are the LEAST of the costs when it comes to college. Btw, I’m not low-income, so my family can afford those fees. A couple schools didn’t even cost a thing to apply, so I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought I was casting a wide net – 4 safeties, 4 matches, 4 reaches. But they’re all research universities. Though their websites and CC did help me feel like those were great choices, those feelings are still limited to hearsay. I kept hearing about how small LAC’s were, so I tended to shy away from them because I feared being cooped up in a small cage. But then I noticed something: when CCers describe schools as “small,” they usually mean the student population. What I was worried about was spatial size, and while it’s common sense that there’s a pretty strong correlation between space and students, I imposed the student population definition over my spatial one. There’s a college nearby with 2000 students, but I thought it felt too small; later I realized that campus was only 100 acres. When I re-researched some of the LAC’s I had in mind, I was shocked to find that some of their campuses were larger than one of my reaches and a few of my matches; one even had 1000 acres with less than 1800 students.

After I learned about the campus size, I started rethinking about them. Now I value close friendships, community-feels, and great education from professors themselves with small class sizes, and although I can surely find those among my 12 schools, I still can’t help but feel as though LAC’s have those traits to a whole different magnitude. If I’m wrong in this assumption, please don’t hesitate to disprove me if you wish. . But I read a few blogs online from people who attended relatively small research universities and ended up wishing they chose an LAC.

Bottom line: I wish I could’ve just covered all bases in my college apps. Oh well. This must be a buyer’s remorse phase.